Conventional medical laboratory systems contain many components for processing patient samples, some of which are automated and some of which require manual operation. Laboratory systems today have become more efficient due to those automated components. However, there are still several components of medical laboratory systems that can be automated in order to reduce the time it takes to analyze a sample, the reliance on human intervention, and the space required to house such systems.
Some automated components of a laboratory system include a robotic arm and a specimen gripper. A conventional robotic arm in a laboratory system may be capable of moving in an x, y, or z direction. It may carry a specimen gripper with gripper fingers. The specimen gripper may grip and transport objects such as sample tubes or centrifuge buckets. A specimen gripper and robotic arm may also be used to grip and transport waste objects to discard them into a waste container. However, in some cases, when the specimen gripper releases the waste object into the waste container, the waste object may get stuck to the specimen gripper and may not separate from the specimen gripper. For example, there may be contamination on the outside surface of the waste object (e.g., from a prior aliquotting process) that may cause the object to stick to the gripper fingers. In another example, a label on the waste object may have come off or the glue from the label may have caused the object to be stuck to the gripper fingers during the waste disposal process. In such cases, human intervention may be required to remove the waste object from the gripper. This causes processing delays and requires a human being to correct the problem. Furthermore, in this process, contamination may be transported with the gripper fingers from one waste object to another, thus further increasing the likelihood of spreading the contamination.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.